There is an economic cost to keeping women in their place. It’s $95B in Africa. You would think that would be incentive enough to change but it isn’t.

The West needs to adjust their incentive policies for developing countries to favor gender equality, family planning, and contraception. Until we incentive the behavior they’re not going to change on their own. And the whole world will continue to have problems as a result.

Sub-Saharan Africa loses around $95 billion a year due to gender inequality, jeopardizing the continent’s efforts for economic growth, according to a U.N. report launched Sunday.

Deeply-rooted structural obstacles such as unequal distribution of resources and political power, combined with social institutions that sustain inequality are holding back African women, and the continent, said the Africa Human Development Report 2016 by U.N. Development Program.

If gender gaps are closed in labor markets, education and health, it will accelerate the eradication of poverty and hunger, said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.

Why do we not address two important issues in this case about insurance and contraception? First is that the right to religious freedom is extended to individuals, and their churches by extension. Businesses, schools, and non profits are not religious by their very nature. They shouldn’t be considered eligible for the right to religious freedom.

The second is that employer sponsored healthcare is what’s wrong with this whole conversation. Employers should not be involved in healthcare. Health insurance should have no relationship to employment status and employers should have no say in what is offered or received. Until we divorce our health insurance from our employers we are going to have unnecessary and sticky issues.

The West should be promoting reproductive rights as a gateway to solving lots of other societal ills. Giving women throughout the world control over their bodies is the only starting point that makes sense. Once all women have the ability to make decisions about their reproductive systems we will finally be on the way to gender equality across the globe.

Seeing things which could be fixed but aren’t is maddening. Sure it takes a long time to improve health outcomes in the developing world, but fistula’s in African women seems like something the West can help with. The article links access to contraception and C sections with reductions in the debilitating condition.

How can we say we want to improve things in the developing world and not start with 50% of the population.

The staff here thinks of itself as respectful of all well thought out and objectively presented opinions even if they go against core beliefs.

This article is a well written explanation of how the ACA forces Catholic nuns and others to forego their right to religious freedom. We don’t have to agree with their beliefs to support their right to exercise them. Individually. Not as an employer.

We recognize that not everyone agrees with us, and that the government will make laws and provide services we don’t support. But in a free and diverse society, the American government should not force its citizens to act in violation of their religious beliefs

What we see wrong with the situation is two fold. The less important is that by being a religious employer the employer entity doesn’t have the right to freedom of religious beliefs. The more important thing is that health insurance shouldn’t be provided by employers. If that weren’t the defacto method of receiving health insurance we wouldn’t have to have this discussion about abortion and contraception.

We seem to look right over the obvious solution to what’s wrong with health insurance. For most people it’s tied to their jobs. This needs to change.

Why do we insist on thinking that employers should have anything to do with healthcare?

“The notion that five older men will say that some business can dictate health choices to their employees is…”

Lunacy. Why do we persist in allowing personal health issues and family planning to be decided by where a person works?

Forget that there is no way that businesses should be allowed to have religious opinions and rights. Corporations are not persons. Why are we still stuck in a broken model in which employers determine health insurance for employees?

If we just separated healthcare from employment we wouldn’t have these little annoyances to our freedom of choice.

The best cure for over population is prosperity which brings down the birthrate, but we need more than that to avoid the resultant Eco crisis and resource shortages headed our way.

Its astounding that there are still educated citizens of economically developed countries who work their asses off to subvert sex education, sexual health initiatives, contraception, and reproductive rights. Its not surprising that poor and uneducated people in emerging economies act this way, the effort just to subsist doesn’t leave much time for contemplation of global concerns.

What is surprising with any community is when they can’t see that they are furthering their own problems by ignoring the reality around them. Indians, and especially young Indians, are fucking themselves crazy. Their parents can put their head in the sand and say it isn’t happening, but their runaway population growth in the last 20 years belies that.

The following Time article addresses India’s population problems, out of control adolescent pregnancy rates, and the country’s inability to see the need for sex education, sexual health initiatives, contraception, reproductive rights, and gender rights.